Despite disappointing turnout at some of the polls, voters elected new leaders in Grovetown and Harlem on Tuesday.

Only 4.3 percent of the active registered voters in Grovetown, 206 voters, went to the polls Tuesday.

“(It’s) very low,” Columbia County Board of Elections Executive Director Nancy Gay said. During a similar election in 2011 that also included the Sunday alcohol sales ordinance, 12.8 percent of active voters turned out.

Residents in Grovetown and Harlem can head to the polls today to vote to elect leaders in their respective cities.

On the non-partisan ballot are three people vying for two open seats on the Grovetown City Council currently occupied by Lee Briggs and Bruce Stoddard.

Briggs is a John Deere operations manager. He was appointed to fill the more than four months remaining of former Councilman Sonny McDowell’s term. Briggs is seeking a full term. Stoddard, who has served 12 years on the council, is not seeking reelection.

In Cedar Ridge Elementary School’s annual five-day United We Care food drive, the class that brings in the most items is treated to a free pizza party.

On Thursday morning, second-grader Kaden Mielitz ensured his classmates will be the ones chowing down.

When Mielitz, his mother Katie, school counselor Gay Tranum and four schoolmates carted $435 worth of food items from his car to the school, depositing them into their own special bins, that pretty much put the icing on the cake.

The owner of longtime Augusta restaurant The Cotton Patch is adding a second location in Evans.

Owner Bryan Mitchell anticipates opening the restaurant, to be named either Eli’s Cotton Patch West or Eli’s American Kitchen, by January across from the Evans Wal-Mart in the Shoppes at Camelot shopping center, 4446 Washington Road.

The new restaurant will retain many similar features of its riverfront counterpart, such as a casual, low-country theme, but also will allow Mitchell more space and storage to experiment with his cuisine offerings, he said.

A Martinez gas station that closed its gas pumps last week because of tainted gasoline has now stopped selling diesel fuel until the problem is fixed.

The diesel fuel pumps at the Circle K at 457 Old Evans Road were bagged and marked “out of order” Monday while waiting for state officials to approve the sale of fuel.

The problems began Oct. 23, when an A&W Oil Co. tanker driver dropped gasoline into the station’s diesel tanks and diesel into the gasoline tanks, according to Rich Lewis, the Georgia Department of Agriculture Fuel and Measures Division director.